bcr podcast 116: Grab some time with an AI cultural sensitivity guide

In today’s show:

Think a posting to a foreign country is coming up? Grab some time with an AI cultural sensitivity guide.

First up: Freddy, the AI engine that enriches the customer experience

Back in late September, we talked about how chatbots and communication technology that takes advantage of the Internet of Things could revolutionise the customer journey for your company.

Indian developer ‘Freshworks’ has just publicly launched a tool that does exactly that.

It is a multi-modal tool, utilising the communication channels of Google Assistant, chat, email and text.

Freddy allows for the customer to engage in conversation from the outset, responding in natural language. If the customer cannot get their request resolved, Freddy reroutes the conversation to a human customer support agent, along with a synopsis of the conversation so far and any customer history the organisation has.

Freshworks has been trialling their software with a company for over a year and the host company reports that it has achieved most of what it had in mind when first introducing it.

AI takes on your email inbox

We’re talking about the email inbox. But one startup is hoping to tame the wild beast.

Previous attempts at sorting out the inbox have often involved replacing the existing inbox with a new version. But Allie Sutton from June.ai believes her new AI engine is different.

June recognises the difference between an email from a business and an email conversation from another person.

Emails from brands, platforms, etc., are sorted into one stream, which you can view as an easy-to-browse feed.

Conversations from people are displayed in an iMessage-looking format, sorted by person, not topic. This lets users get a clear picture of their full conversation history with an individual without worrying about particular threads. Files they have sent over get treated similarly.

The whole system works with major email platforms such as Gmail and Outlook, and doesn’t seek to replace them.

Need some cultural sensitivity training? Your AI guide can help

Overseas postings can come with issues of accidental cultural insensitivity. Particularly in the Middle East and Asia. But good news is at hand.

‘Alelo Enskill’ is an avatar-based multi-platform training simulator that allows you to test out your knowledge of foreign etiquette in the safety of your preferred location.

Various scenarios can be run in which you have to engage with foreign hosts, and how you react, the words you use, can either help or hinder your communication.

The engine running the simulations is AI, capturing not only your utterances but also the nuances of your communication. In the future, the system will be expanded to capture your facial gestures.

Naturally, everything is logged, so your supervisor or facilitator can work with you to smooth out your hiccups. And being an avatar-based system, you can try as many times as you like to smooth out your communications. Unlike your trainer, the avatar never gets tired.

Enskill is already hard at work in the US Government, and third-party vendors are offering Enskill to foreign students looking to learn the best way to communicate in the US and Europe.

And that’s it for another episode of the Better Communication Results podcast. Subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, in your podcast app of choice, or over at Soundcloud. Or subscribe to our blog by filling in the form below.

Until next time, take care, take some communication risks, because you never know what is going to pay off, and communicate with passion.

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